Rumors, Lies & Ruminations

by Scott Hearne on October 1, 2009

Wow, what a summer this has been!

As I’m sure all twelve of our regular visitors have noticed by now content more or less ground to a halt about the end of June. There are many reasons but the two that come immediately to mind are that autocrossers become pretty busy during the autocross season (who knew?) and I had way more trouble converting my trusty CRX from a faux EP car to a sort of legitimate GP car. I won’t bore everyone here with the details other than to say that the troubles began with the removal of the TWM individual throttle bodies and really hasn’t fully concluded just yet! While I was able to compete in the car at Nationals my fuel pressure problems bit both me (day 1) and my son Mike (day 2). Through all that I had the help and support of the Friends of the Rogues and especially John Fessler, Chris Raglin and Robert Chrismas. Thanks guys (and girls, you know who you are!) you all helped Mike and me turn a disaster into a memorable event!

After all that I fully intend to continue the build series on my CRX. I now know what is wrong and everyone will be able to see how it gets fixed. I also know now that just stripping the interior from a CSP CRX and putting 6″ wheels with slicks on will not be enough to get the job done. What everyone feared would be a complete pummeling of the newer cars over the older cars just did not happen. There is a lot of life left in those cars and the new GP cars are going to have to work a lot harder!

I can’t tell you how impressed I was with the new Lincoln site. The size of the place is enormous. While there are a few issues that will need to be addressed I have no doubt that the event chair and the various chiefs have already identified all of the trouble spots and have taken steps to get them corrected for next year. The only real downside of the whole event was the Awards Banquet arrangement but as in everything else I am confident there will be improvements. I have been around long enough to remember the first years in Topeka and Forbes Field were not as good as everyone now remembers them (you know, that familiar saw the older I get the faster I was syndrome)! One final note: The Haymarket part of downtown Lincoln was just awesome!

Our Thursday night cookout was great and many thanks go out to Paul Magee for bringing along his grill and acting as a very capable chef for everyone in attendance. Hopefully we will be able to expand on this for next year. We would also like to be paddocked near those Atlanta and Texas folks too. They were A LOT of fun. Huh, Sean?

We are now hard at work getting our profiles lined up for all of the 2009 Solo National Champions. We are also going to be taking a closer look at some of the others in the field in other finishing positions. Things will quickly be back to normal here and we promise to keep the material flowing!